March 17, 2015

"A caressing, torchy voice that enchants even the most hardened theater-goer, plus an astonishing beauty, make gorgeous Lena Horne one of the most exciting blues singers of our time. Her haunting style of singing has lifted this Brooklyn girl to the top of the nation's outstanding entertainers."

We missed a post due to illness here at the WFMU Comic Supplement, but we're back with a vengeance this week with all true-life stories of famous music and entertainment stars of yesteryear, as depicted oh-so-realistically in comic books of their day.

We've got six whole life stories to learn about so let's get right down to it; come and join us for non-fictional fun right after the jump!

December 07, 2014

"How many times have you seen a ghost story on television? Did it leave you frightened, fearful that ghosts really exist? Of course it didn't . . . Yet, could you really be sure? Perhaps this tale will change your mind, for you are about to witness the real-life results of the spine-chilling stories told on . . . Station G.H.O.S.T!"

Another excerpt from today's selections:

"Roger Dorn loved beautiful music - - but not when the hands that played it were those of a man he had murdered!"

Ok, well, there's also this to look forward to on our banquet today:

"It was a novel idea . . . This dance on the large native drum! Patrons crowded the exclusive New York night club to see the famous Annette perform! But as the exotic dancer's feet began tapping out a rhythmic tattoo, strange things commenced happening . . .Horrible, unearthly things! And the giant Haitian tom-tom became a drum of doom!"

Yes, as you can see, we have four stories from the dark side of music and entertainment today, including a dance of doom to go with that drum of doom, either way there's plenty of accursed doom to go around for everyone in our bounty of comic book sickness this week at the WFMU Comic Supplement! Take your seat and dig in - right after the jump!

August 02, 2014

Ah, Grasshopper! A mainstay of My Castle of Quiet playlists from the very beginning. This Brooklyn duo has traversed the most-eerie of improvised / otherworldly territories, and come out the other end, as outstanding soloists and collaborators, in many projects outside of Ghop. Their musicianship remains expert, the sheer quality of them "knowing what they're doing," and choosing to do THIS, is one of the great charms / inspirations of Grasshopper, still very much the "mothership" for Josh and Jesse.

Fans will find the band largely in familiar territory here, painting a slow-burn garden of creeping dread and pulsation, cradled by ethereal long tones. "Witch's Blood in a Sauce" finds them especially "on," adding unanticipated horror-dressing to their usual array of mesmerizing sound evolution. Always good, and always at home on MCoQ.

Grasshopper have new work out or coming soon, on various formats / labels. The new, full-length Grasshopper LP (their third 12" on vinyl), Dark Sabbath: Symbols of Evil is coming soon on Hausu Mountain. Jesse and Josh also have a solo / split tape, Josh Millrod / Shingles, also on Hausu, there's a full Shingles cassette, First God Planted a Garden (2AM Tapes) ,and a Josh Millrod solo cassette, Seeking the Millenary Kingdom, on Solid Melts. (MCoQ archive links: Josh | Shingles)

Thanks as always to audio engineer Juan Aboites, for his professionalism and talent, and to Tracy Widdess of Brutal Knitting, for continuing to immortalize my crappy iPhone band captures. (This one is especially good, recalling the hippie-photo-collage covers of Amon Düül and their ilk.)

March 30, 2014

"The story of the rise of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy has always been told through the eyes of Bergen. The editors received the following story from Charlie McCarthy which we have visualized. It it their tale told through the eyes of McCarthy."

Again this week we'll diverge from our usual strictly music-related Comic Supplement posts to look at another area of the entertainment and cultural world. In this case, where better to go than right to the wooden mouth of perhaps the most famous ventriloquist dummy of all, and certainly one of the best dressed, for our feature story, a delirious 14-page fantasy from the mind of Charlie himself. As the author and artist of this strange piece are unknown there's nothing for it but to plunge right into this backup story from the pages of Doc Savage magazine number eight, from June 1942, right after the jump!

February 01, 2014

"Hi Folks - Uncle Bernie wants all the children (and grown-ups too) to be happy! In this latest Novelty Mart catalog you will find fun galore and new excitement for the entire family, year-round entertainment and delights for all the children -- handy useful novelties to fascinate the grown-ups.

You will be thrilled with the magnificent assortment of exciting action toys, novelties, and housewares. You will be delighted with their fine quality and workmanship. You will be absolutely amazed at their rock bottom prices --- sensationally low priced because we're the largest mail order firm of its kind in the country. So just turn these pages for a remarkable PARADE OF VALUES. And feel perfectly safe in ordering any of them. Remember! Every item you choose has Novelty Mart's full unconditional guarantee..."

------ Uncle Bernie ------

Thus goes the pitch from Bernie himself opening up his 1953 catalog, issued from their regular address of 59 East Eighth Street, New York 3, NY. In my last post here at the Beware of the BlogComic Supplement we briefly examined Uncle Bernie's mail order outfit and its possible tangential relationship to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention which then dovetails into comic book ads in general and some other areas of folk Americana / arcana / ephemera that bubble and boil just beneath the surface of wide public consciousness. The comic book publishing business could be sketchy enough, but the folks that advertised in pulp magazines, digests and comics could run the gamut of flim-flammery. All harmless and good fun for the family, usually cheap, but sometimes with price-tags quite high for their day. Old junk that gives you a wistful feeling when you realize it was probably better manufactured junk in its day than one could find now.

Welcome to the comic book sideshow, my friends. Right this way - join me after the jump!

January 04, 2014

"When Kathy Williams got a chance to work with the world-famous television, recording and motion picture organization, the Spike Jones Orchestra, it looked as though her romance might go on the rocks. It took genial Spike himself to straighten things out and show Kathy's boy friend that careers and marriage do mix..."

Yup - Mr. Jones is back again this week in comic-book form (we've had a visit from him once before at WFMU here). Today's first feature comes from the yellowed pages of Youthful Romances magazine, a series which we have also examined in this blog previously here. Their gimmick was to include celebrity cameos in what was otherwise an ordinary adult romance book. "Love Me, Love My Job!" comes from issue # 15, January 1953.

Our bonus second story on this frosty Saturday comes from the 30th issue of Comic Cavalcade (December 1948), a 76-page, 15 cent funny animal magazine from DC Comics (National Periodicals), wherein we'll meet a snazzy assortment of musically-inclined undersea dwellers and one oyster with vocalization issues. Join us after the jump for these two fun tales!

November 09, 2013

Grace Jones is a Jamaican born (May 1948), New York raised (1962) model, actress and most notably, a Grammy nominated Disco pop star turned new wave/R&B artist at the peak of anti-disco sentiment. Her Androgynous style landed her on the covers of Elle, and Vogue magazine inspiring the aesthetic of many female pop stars to come. Her fashion sense and style is a rebellion against the status-quo regarding gender rolls, and what a woman’s “place” is. Through her music, clothing and attitude, she most certainly is the rebellious epitomic representation of the Pastor’s child that she claims to be.

Grace was born and raised in Spanish Town, Jamaica until the age of thirteen. While there, she was raised by her grandparents part-time while her fashion-forward seamstress mother trotted the globe behind Grace’s sermon giving Pastor of a father. Growing up, she was name called things like “Olive Oyl” after Popey the Sailor Man’s shapeless love, and “nothing-in-the-middle” for what some saw as her lack of breasts. In these early years, surrounded by familial men of the cloth with a line of bishops stretching back to her Pentecostal grand Uncle, Grace took note and issue with the well defined, strict gender roles established around her. Grace didn’t want to become her Grandmother, and speaking about her she says, “She could never say anything at all. She just lived through all that abuse in the name of religion. If she did object, my step-grandfather (who was twenty years younger than her) would dismiss her with a wave of his hand. Even though my mum was tough, my dad was scarier.”

In 1962, her parents moved her and her siblings to New York. While Grace was seen as a tad masculine, her brother was seen in the reverse. In Jamaica, he organized the church choir and played the piano. Apparently

September 04, 2013

What makes a great grind band? Doing as much as you can in an average of 43 seconds' song duration, flexing those ferocious chops from all angles, and, though this may be hard to explain to someone whose ears are attuned to pop music and the traditional song form, a certain "catchiness," an anthemic propulsion that will make the listener/receiver want to propel oneself into the pit without a care for personal safety. Psychic Limb have all these qualities, in spades.

I've liked these guys from the second I heard them, they stand out mightily from the pack of late 2000s grind on bandcamp and elsewhere, and they make records that stand firmly amongst the classics of the genre. And yes, they can and do reproduce it all in person.

For months, drummer Casey and I tried to schedule a live radio appearance for PL, and finally were able to line something up for the final MCoQ weekly broadcast on June 7, 2013.

This set represents their latest (and reportedly final) release, Jamaica. They still seem to be playing a few shows here and there, so if you have the chance, catch them live while you still can.

Huge thanks to live-sound engineer Juan Aboites, who deftly scultped many a live Castle session in the show's final months of its original tenure. Thanks also to Tracy Widdess, for taking these photos of the band, and for co-hosting the last show with me in person, flying in from Vancouver Island, BC, to do so. Full broadcast archive can be streamed here.

Track titles, though they hardly seem to matter, are as follows: 22, 27, 19, 20, 29, 28, 24, 26, 21, 23, 30, 25. Psychic Limb's set is presented here as it should be, as one continuous mp3.

August 03, 2013

Recently, while researching an upcoming blog post in this Comics Supplement series, I came across this second appearance of a villain called The Minstrel, a banjo-picking criminal. Unfortunately, when I looked The Minstrel up in the Grand Comics Database, I read the data wrong, and looked in the wrong place for the first Minstrel tale, so we'll look today at his second and final battle with Doll Man; perhaps I'll track down the first story someday. As soon as I saw a cover with a looming banjo-clad bad guy I thought it might make a good feature for a future blog.

The Doll Man was created in 1939 by the powerful team of Everett M. "Busy" Arnold and Will Eisner and he ran for 14 years in Feature Comics and then his own book. This particular story, late in his career, comes from Feature # 138, and is written by prolific comic book scribe William Woolfolk and possibly drawn by Bill Ward.

"Ohh, I'm a singin' minstrel man ... I sing and rob wherever I can!" Sound like my kinda musician! Let's join this concert of crime right after the jump!

UPDATE to this post: I just located the FIRST appearance of The Minstrel character (in Doll Man # 23) and I'll be posting it here in B.O.T.B. in my next installment, on August 17th.

June 22, 2013

Jimmy's little sister had it right when she exclaimed as they listened to an elaborate radio dramatization, "It must take an awful lot of work and -- and people to put on a show like that!". Jimmy himself remained unimpressed until he was reduced drastically in size by a manic and frightening anthropomorphous microphone and shown just how complicated and expensive the whole process really was.

Although this 16-page giveaway comic book put out by the National
Broadcasting Company in 1947 is mainly a puff piece hyping all of the amazing material that one could dial up for free at home on their radios, it also stands as a fairly accurate guide to NBC procedures at that time. Still, that evil little microphone character is just scary; no way around that. We even get a glimpse of the early television broadcasting setup from New York.

So let's go on a guided tour of the most sophisticated radio organization at that time, with loads of thrills, chills, adventures, and you might even learn something along the way! All as illustrated handsomely by Sam Glankoff, right after the jump!

May 03, 2013

For this month's Revitalize Music Contest, artists from Lisbon to Austin dug through public domain songs, got inspired, and submitted their creations to our contest repository. Our talented judges from the music, radio, and public domain worlds loved hearing the wide range of incredible entries, but eventually had to select a winning song.

OUR WINNER IS CROWN THE INVISIBLE

Crown the Invisible created an incredible power pop rendition of the 1911 revenge anthem "The Spaniard That Blighted My Life" by Billy Merson. The song tells the story of a man whose girl is charmed away by a Spanish bullfighter.

'Twas at the bull fight where we met himWe'd been watching his daring displayAnd while I went out for some nuts and a programmeThe dirty dog stole her away

The winning band's been around for about a year, and are a blend between a studio compositional project and a raucous psychedelic act. They are all young, grizzled rock dudes who live and work in East Williamsburg warehouses, where they've been cultivating their space/stoner rock sound. They describe their band as "if Rick Wakeman played with Ride, but the songs were written by The Pretty Things while they watched Planet of the Apes and listened to Hawkwind." That is to say, they all grew up on early '90s and '60s British stuff.

January 22, 2013

Blissfully unaware of what was to come later in the month, in preparation for WFMU's Web-only, "silent" fundraiser, the plan for My Castle of Quiet was to mount three special programs; The Sonics of Terror, a soundtracks-only special; and two double bills—one improvised / experimental "noise" bill, and one metal bill, the latter showcasing two bands that I'd been "courting" for some months—Chicago's excellent Sun Splitter, passing through on tour, and Brooklyn's relatively unsung black-metal giants, Yellow Eyes. The latter program was to top off a very eventful month on the show, and boy, did it ever.

As great as they are different, Sun Splitter and Yellow Eyes are both exemplary and plainly evident of how wildly varied what falls under the banner of "underground metal" can be; Splitter draw on "rock," with a thick and good-smellin' Sharpie, culling from Big Black, Led Zeppelin and all points between, with a pure, dense psychedelia permeating their unique compositions, while Yellow Eyes are one of Brooklyn's best-kept black-metal secrets, true to the parent genre, while unquestionably having their own sound, wickedly sea-ferring accomplished players, great songwriters with a murky sound and an attitude to match, seeking neither fame nor widespread success; thus far, YE have released their mini-masterpieces only on cassette, though two full-length vinyl releases threaten to drop within the coming year.

Intrepid WFMU sound engineer Juan Aboites helmed both sessions, bringing to both projects the cohesion that their complex deliveries demand, and though Sun Splitter were pre-recorded on 10.24, the night before the broadcast, had I not been admitting of this fact, the listeners would never have known, the band's pulsating energy and sheer volume rattling the walls at 43 Monty; heavy, hypnotic Gibson riffs broken asunder by the psychedelic cage-rattling of men captured in H.H. Holmes' damned filthy Chicagoan underbelly.

Yellow Eyes blistered through four of their finest songs, acute treble and assaultive blast beats casting their vivid mental picture of a band of ghost sailors, maddened by syphilis and too many hours alone at sea, listening to the persistent slap of the waves against the hull.

Keep your eyes and ears on both of these bands, to build continually impressive live performances and discographies, and I cannot recommend highly enough the two full-lengths, Sun Splitter III (Bloodlust!) and Silence Threads The Evening's Cloth (Sol y Nieve.) Huge thanks to Juan and the bands for a night to remember. Both sets are presented as relative continuums, with Sun Splitter's final chunk broken off on its impressive own, and YE's set laid out as one continuous mp3.

January 04, 2013

Mark your calendars for Sunday, January 13th! WFMU is hosting a Mini-Record Fair and blowout benefit show at The Bell House in Brooklyn!
The fair happens 11-5pm (no admission after 3pm due to space
constraints), and at 7:30 we'll be kicking off a night of music mayhem
with Arrington Di Dionyso of Old Time Relijun, followed by the Dot Wiggin Band (of the Shaggs!), the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and Texas psych/gospel dynamos The Relatives!Jonathan Toubin spins! Tickets for the Music Benefit at this link here, and more info below.

Tix are $10 for the fair (tickets at the door only) and $20 for the concert, with advance tickets for sale here!! All proceeds benefit WFMU in its post-Hurricane Sandy Recovery.

The fair and concert are both separate events, and the inner hall will
be cleared out at 5pm to reopen for the show at 7:30. Set times:

December 27, 2012

It was a night of true magic, back in early October, when some of Brooklyn's finest improvisers gathered at WFMU / My Castle of Quiet, to offer unique, exclusive performances, on a double-bill to support the station's pre-Hurricane-Sandy, Web-only fundraiser for that month.

First, Lea Bertucci, a master of spacious atmospheres, and gloomy, contemplative soundscapes, on her trademark combine of physical, open-reel tape and electroacoustic bass clarinet. Lea's two sets from this night evoke The Grand Canyon, and Utah's wide-open spaces, where she'd spent several months earlier in the year on artist's retreat. Lea has been performing solo for many years (see her bio, at Broken Diorama, linked above), as well as in the hometown-favorite duo of Twistycat.

Second, K-Salvatore, the duo of Jason Meagher and Pat Murano, coming off the high of their landmark LP, Tsar Ova Elk, a veritable shoe-in for the My Castle of Quietend-of-year music list (like I said, glaring omissions; this one very worthy of inclusion and just slipped off my mental radar at the time the list was being compiled.) Pat has appeared twice before on the show, both solo as Decimus, and in 2010 with Malkuth; both Jason and Pat are founding members of the No-Neck Blues Band. Their set hummed and shook our building; as "top shelf" as anything from the aforementioned newest LP.

Huge thanks to Ernie Indradat, for engineering two live artists in one night, with his usual cool head and cosmic sensitivity. Thanks again to Lea, Pat and Jason, for their ample talents.

November 25, 2012

Last Wednesday was Art Day, so Sluggo and I went to see
Discovering Columbus, which was supposed to end on November 19 but has been
extended through December 2. The friend who gave us the heads-up about the
extension said it was because so many people missed seeing it on account of the
Superstorm; I haven’t been able to confirm that, but as soon as she told us it
was still on, I jumped online and got tickets for Wednesday morning.

The piece is easy to describe, but its effect is not simple.
Tatzu Nishi has built a living room up in the air around the statue of Columbus
in Columbus Circle. You climb up seven flights of stairs, and enter a hallway,
and then turn into some rich guy’s living room where the 13-foot–tall statue is
a knickknack on the coffee table. It’s delightful. A little girl who followed
us inside dissolved in a fit of giggles when she saw it, the kind of little-kid
giggles where you finally have to tip over onto a chair and kick your legs like
a bug. Then her dad started trying to teach her to say “recontextualize.”

It’s cool to get to see the statue close up; it’s cool to
see it in that context, which brings up thoughts of the 1% and private art and
public art. The furniture is mostly from Bloomingdales, but the wallpaper was
designed by Nishi himself, and features images of things he knew about America
when he was growing up in Japan: Elvis, Marilyn, Michael Jackson, Coca-Cola,
Malcolm X, Mickey Mouse. It made me think about how Columbus didn’t even know
he was in America, he thought he was somewhere else. Everybody’s always discovering
America, and nobody ever knows what it is. The big, flat-screen TV in the room
is always on, set permanently to Fox News.

After we discovered Columbus, I went across the street to
the Museum of Arts and Design for “The Art of Scent,” which had opened the day
before. It is the best museum show I have ever smelled.

I was lucky to get there the day after the show opened—it
really was delayed by the storm—before everything starts malfunctioning and
they run out of the perfumes. When I was there, the only thing that wasn’t
working was the player for the video interviews with some of the artists—no big
deal. Also, I was there at 11:00, right when the museum opened, and when I
walked into the main gallery, it was empty: empty of people, and empty of things.
It looked like a big, white, empty room, until I noticed some faint depressions
in the wall, about the size and shape of a row of urinals. This was the
exhibit: 12 scents, arranged in chronological order, from Jicky
(1889)—Jicky!—to Untitled (2010). You stick your head into one of the
urinal-like devices, and a puff of scent envelopes your face. The sort of info
that’s usually on a wall label is projected onto the wall next to where you’re
standing, then disappears. The exhibits lead you through a sketch of
developments in the art of fragrance—the introduction of synthetics and new
molecules and new ways to construct olfactory compositions. Although all these scents
were developed to be sold commercially, they are not treated as commercial
products, they are presented as works of art.

In a smaller room off the main gallery, there’s a long table
with bowls full of the 12 scents featured in the main exhibit. You’re invited
to dip a scent strip in each one and then use a tablet to enter two words you
think describe each. The words “hostile” and “unwearable” weren’t included, so
I wasn’t able to say anything about “Untitled,” but I took a scent strip from
each sample anyway. There were five slits along one wall, where cards were
dispensed to show four mods in the development of Tresor, along with the final
composition, and it was interesting to see how that happened and at what point
I thought they should’ve quit while they were ahead.

I’m probably not the average perfume-wearing DJ, in that I
would rather smell like the air from a bicycle tire (Bvlgari Black) or a stack
of wet cardboard (Dzing!) than a flower. Even so, I think you should go to MAD
for “The Art of Scent,” just because there’s never been anything like it. And
because you’ll get to smell Jicky.